At one point I looked up at the gallery to see the kid who bullies me looking very disappointed indeed – it was all I could do to not shout up at him, ‘Yes! Are you watching this, you Satan?! You Devil?! Behold!’ At the end of the game I did half expect to be beaten up by the two men we’d just humiliated. They were peeved to say the least. Their badminton date hadn’t panned out the way they’d hoped and they hadn’t been in the slightest bit friendly to Team Sames from the word go (yes, Team Sames is Team Sam and James). But instead of pulverizing us they shook our hands and left with the two women who were smirking at them all the way out of the leisure centre. And then Sam beat me three games in a row and that little kid returned to running up the walls with laughter every time I got hit between the eyes with a shuttlecock.7
Xmas Tree
People don’t talk about this enough, but buying your first Christmas tree as an adult is a significant moment in your life. And buying your first real Christmas tree as an adult somehow feels even more significant. I think this is because, like all adult decisions, it makes zero sense. You know you’ll be hoovering up pine needles until the following Christmas but you’ve decided it’s worth it for the house to feel two per cent more festive than it would with a plastic tree. But once you’ve got one you instantly regret it and day after day you’re reminded that it’s not even remotely worth the hassle. This is how I also feel about pensions, mortgages and water filters.
After the second Wood Green house I had moved into a tiny flat with my then-girlfriend near Camden. There wasn’t much room for a tree in there but it was our first Christmas in the flat and we felt like making the effort. When moving in together we both had to be very selective about what we brought in with us in terms of personal belongings due to the limited space. This resulted in a long and heated argument over Andrei Kanchelskis. An argument which I lost because, bottom line, bringing a human sized toy alligator complete with neon pink top hat and party gator t-shirt into a flat that can barely contain the two human sized humans who live there is never going to happen8. It is still one of the most ridiculous arguments I’ve ever had, mainly because no matter how angrily you say it, ‘party gator’ is not a phrase that can ever be taken seriously. To give you an idea of the size of the flat, it was so small that the bedroom linked on to the living room via a sliding frosted glass door because there wasn’t enough room on either side for a door that opened outwards. One time, my then-girlfriend (as I will be referring to her throughout this entire story) woke up in the middle of the night and in her tiredness tried to open the slide door like a normal door by pulling it towards her and it broke and jammed itself between the floor and the door frame. This meant it blocked the entire doorway and was impossible to squeeze through. I attempted to move it back into place and the glass let out a mighty creak that sounded like it was about to break and I immediately got scared and stopped trying to move it. We were three floors up but there was a chance we could phone a friend (albeit at four in the morning) and get them to come and stand outside where we could throw them our keys and they could let themselves in and move the glass door from the other side. Except we couldn’t do that because our keys were in the living room. I tried to move the door again and it made that same awful noise. My then-girlfriend really needed to go to the bathroom and we were running out of ideas so we phoned the fire brigade. This is the only time I have ever had to call the emergency services, which is a surprise considering some of the events that take place in this book.
The lady on the other end didn’t sound hugely convinced but took our word for it that this was indeed an emergency and said someone would be on their way soon. What was really great was that she sent out the five firemen who most found our situation utterly hilarious. The ease with which they sorted the door out was embarrassing but then again they were wearing protective clothing so weren’t as scared of the glass breaking and slicing them up. What stuck with me the most was the comment the first fireman made when he climbed in through our bedroom window. ‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit hot in here isn’t it?’
This was a comment that every visitor to our tiny flat made because it was indeed always hot, but when you consider that most of the buildings this man enters are on fire, I think that’s pretty rich. A bit hot! Compared to the flames you’re usually wading through? A bit hot is it? Compared to an inferno? A bit hot? The nerve of that fireman. They were unable to get the door back on its dollies so it just became one of those things you have lying around in the house. Just a huge glass door, propped up against the wall next to an empty doorway because of that time we’d trapped ourselves in our own bedroom and had to call the fire brigade to get us out.
So now we had decided to buy a tree, if only to distract ourselves from the ever-present dead door that we couldn’t use.
There was a supermarket on my street that was selling proper, real-life Christmas trees. They were all on the pavement out front and today was the day I was finally going to purchase one.
When I got there all of the trees were looking pretty sorry for themselves, and there was only one good one left. It looked beefy, it looked healthy, it had volume, and it would be mine. So I picked it up and made my way into the supermarket so I could buy it. I headed straight for the tills, which annoyingly were the other side of the supermarket, meaning I had to negotiate the aisles on my way there. Weaving in between other shoppers while holding a big Christmas tree is hard. I was shedding needles all over the place and stumbling between trolleys and toddlers, constantly trying to keep an eye on the top of the tree in case it wiped out an entire shelf of tinned goods in one careless swoop. I felt a tap on the shoulder and turned to find one of the supermarket employees looking at me with a worried expression.
‘You’re not supposed to bring them inside,’ he said.
I froze. When you think you’re supposed to walk around a supermarket with a Christmas tree you feel pretty cool and maybe even admired by your fellow shoppers. When you’re not supposed to be walking around a supermarket with a Christmas tree you feel somewhat exposed when standing in the middle of the supermarket holding a Christmas tree. It’s like having a dream when you’re suddenly naked in public.
‘There’s a barcode tag on the top, you just bring that in and leave the tree on the pavement,’ he continued, pointing at the top of the tree where the aforementioned barcode tag hung like a star. Well, this made perfect sense. What did I think was going to happen? When I got to the tills what was my plan? To lay the tree on the conveyor belt and pop a next customer please sign after it? Maybe chance my luck on the self-service checkouts and weigh it on the scales, choosing the Christmas tree option from the menu? I made my way back outside, following my own trail of needles like Hansel and Gretel, then I put the tree down, removed the tag and walked with ease to the tills.
Once I had paid for the tree I went back outside to discover that it had vanished. All the scrawny trees were still there but where was mine? I looked up and down the street and then finally back into the supermarket where I could see the top of a healthy looking Christmas tree, without a barcode tag hanging from it, bobbing up and down above the biscuit aisle. I headed back inside.
For a while I was having to stand on my tiptoes to see over the aisle shelves in order to find the thief. They were very tricksy, weaving in and out of various aisles (trying to shake me no doubt), but I didn’t give up and it wasn’t long before I’d cornered my foe in the frozen food section. It was a dad with his two young children. The kids were probably five and eight, at a guess – y’know, the age where Christmas is the best thing in the whole world – and they looked very taken with their new tree. But this was my tree, this was my first tree, my first tree as an adult, my first real tree. I couldn’t return empty-handed.
‘Excuse me, sorry but that’s actually my tree.’ I was very polite and spoke softly and with an understanding tone. If his kids hadn’t been there this man would’ve immediately told me to fuck off, but instead he said, ‘Well it’s no
t your tree is it because I’ve got it.’ Dammit. His argument made perfect sense. Then he pointed at a lasagne ready-meal in his trolley. ‘I suppose that lasagne is yours as well, is it?’
‘No, just the tree. I’ve already paid for the tree, you see,’ I explained.
‘Is that a fact?’ he scoffed, then pointed inside his trolley. ‘I suppose you’ve already paid for that lasagne as well.’
‘No I haven’t,’ was the best response I could come up with because I really hadn’t already paid for the lasagne and don’t know why I would’ve wanted to. I needed to explain the system to him. ‘You see, what you’re meant to do is remove the barcode from the top of the tree, then go inside the supermarket, pay for the tree using the barcode and go outside to collect the tree afterwards,’ I said.
The man raised his eyebrows then picked up the lasagne, looked at the back of it and said, ‘Sorry, just checking in case you’d stolen the barcode off the back of this lasagne as well.’ The man’s obsession with his lasagne was infuriating. But I was not going to allow myself to be sidetracked. I knew what he was doing; he was trying to move the argument on to something else so I’d get distracted and forget about the tree. But I wasn’t falling for that old trick.
This went on for a while, and every time I tried to explain the system to this man he would shift focus on to the lasagne. I’ve never known anything like it. A lasagne is nothing like a Christmas tree. They fit inside a trolley easily, they don’t shed parts on the way to the tills, they can be easily shelved, and all ready-made lasagnes are the same – there aren’t good ones and bad ones like with natural, real-life Christmas trees. You cannot compare a Christmas tree and a lasagne. But this man found about fifty different ways to compare the two as if they were the most interchangeable things on the entire planet. The amount of times I had to say, ‘No sir, I haven’t bought that lasagne’ was ludicrous. I shouldn’t really have needed to say it once, let alone repeatedly.
In the end, the same supermarket employee who’d explained the barcodes to me approached us and calmed the man down. The man actually listened this time and didn’t once rebut with any accusations regarding his lasagne. Once he understood what had happened he reluctantly handed over the tree. And as I accepted the tree I made the mistake of making eye contact with his children. When I saw their sad little faces, it just didn’t feel Christmassy of me to rob them of their tree, even though it was technically my tree. Christmas itself belongs to children, not adults, so maybe this tree was rightfully theirs more than it was mine.
But of course I did not give it back because my then-girlfriend had given me the job of buying the tree that day and I didn’t want to fail at the one job I had been given so bad luck kids, your dad should’ve learned the rules before grabbing trees willy-nilly. Merry Christmas. And then I stole his lasagne (I didn’t steal his lasagne but I wish I had done).
Another significant Christmas for me was the first Christmas when I bought other people presents. I would have been maybe eight or nine years old and told my dad that I was tired of giving people presents bought by my parents but with ‘from James’ written on the tag. He was cool about it and when I set off to do my Christmas shopping he had just one thing to say to me: ‘Remember, you’re buying presents for other people so don’t go out and buy yourself any presents today. Christmas is about thinking of others, OK?’
I nodded and set off to buy everyone some top-notch presents: a bar of soap for my mum, a chocolate bar for my brother, a chocolate bar for my sister and a chocolate bar for my dad. And then I spotted it – the best song I had ever heard had been released on cassette single: ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’ by No Way Sis. No Way Sis were an Oasis parody band who dressed and sounded like Oasis. No Way Sis had taken it upon themselves to do a cover of ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing’ because Oasis had done a little nod to that song during their track ‘Shakermaker’.
I wanted that single badly. It was £3.50 and I had spent less than £2 on each of my family’s gifts. But as far as I was concerned, no one would ever know. I could keep the single a secret for a while, I was sure of that. It’s not like wiping your soapy hands on someone’s coat. There’s no streaky hand marks left behind when you buy yourself a present illegally (illegal according to the Christmas rules, that is). I’d just buy it then keep it hidden for a month or so then start listening to it when there weren’t as many eyes on me – foolproof! I got home and craftily stashed the No Way Sis single in a separate bag to everyone else’s gifts. I hid the cassette along with my dad’s present in my bedroom and gave the rest of the presents to my dad for him to hide.
Ten minutes later my father called me into his room and when I entered he was holding a small piece of paper and looking quite serious. ‘This is a receipt, James, it’s a record of one of the things you bought today.’
What?! I began to tremble. He allowed this information to sink in then looked back at the receipt. ‘Thing is, the item written on this receipt doesn’t appear to be in your bag. Tell me, what is No Way Sis?’
I had not foreseen this. I’d never bothered to read what was printed on a receipt; how could this double-crossing-piece-of-snitch-paper betray me like this? My dad had followed the paper trail and rumbled me in seconds!
‘Um . . . Let me think . . .’ I stalled unconvincingly. But he didn’t wait for me to ‘think’ at all.
‘It also says you spent more on No Way Sis than on anything else you bought today.’ It says the price too?! This receipt was singing like a canary!!! I hadn’t encountered such a little telltale since Simon sold me out in primary school.
‘That . . . might . . . be . . . for me,’ I caved.
He slowly breathed in and out, a look of disappointment on his face, and then sat down.
‘So. I asked you not to buy anything for yourself today and not only did you buy yourself a gift but you spent more on your own gift than on anyone else’s?’
I sat down opposite him, the reality of the situation dawning on me. I then reacted like a murderer confessing his sins to a priest. I put my head in my hands, shaking my head, and said, with the greatest despair and the deepest regret, ‘Oh God. What have I done?’ My dad was looking at me now, trying to ascertain whether I meant what I was saying or not, so I went further. ‘I would give anything to take it back,’ I sighed, secretly hoping he would let me keep it.
But he knew just what to do to relieve my guilt. ‘It’s OK, why don’t I just buy it from you now and you can use the money to go and buy more presents for other people instead?’
I paused and tried to look thoughtful. He’d really backed me into a corner here. ‘Not . . . necessarily . . .’ I attempted before my father persisted.
‘You said you’d do anything to take it back,’ he reminded me.
I nodded. ‘I may have misspoken,’ I said, trying my best to act like someone who had learned his lesson but somehow still deserved to reap the benefits of what he’d done wrong in the first place. But there was no getting out of this because, let’s face it, my dad’s proposal was the most reasonable thing I’d ever heard.
I didn’t see the No Way Sis single again until my birthday on 9 January. My dad had wrapped it up and given it to me as a surprise present. I have never felt so guilty when opening a gift. Happy Birthday, James, you selfish little oik.
New Year’s Eve
But the scrapes don’t end at Christmas; I’ve had some pretty shoddy New Year’s Eves too. One time, I drank too many Spicy Peppers (spiced rum and Dr Pepper) and then didn’t stop being sick for hours. At one point all I had done in 2013 was puke. I have never drunk Spicy Peppers ever again, not that they have ever been offered to me by anyone because a) I made them up myself and b) they taste revolting. If I ever become a wine sommelier and go from house to house trying to sell people wine in their living rooms, my main story in between tastings will be the cautionary tale of the Spicy Peppers. I’ll use it as a way of scaring the customer into drinking only wine from now on. After
all, no one has ever sat next to a radiator and enjoyed a rare Spicy Pepper while eating the finest soft cheese with a spoon they picked out themselves from the hotel kitchen. If you make a move towards the hotel kitchen with a Spicy Pepper in your hand you will be escorted off the premises and sent packing and on the way home you will be sick on the London Underground five times (in my experience).
My worst New Year’s Eve had occurred a few years earlier when I had done my first (and only) New Year’s Eve gig. The gig was in Gloucester and my friend George had accompanied me as he didn’t want to spend another New Year’s just getting trashed in the same old pubs back home, so came along for a change of scenery if nothing else. I had not paid attention to all/any of the emails I had received about the gig and was unaware that I would be performing in a church and the audience would be the church’s regular congregation. I found this out when I arrived at the venue and walked in to the sounds of a Christian rock band doing their soundcheck. I reassured myself that this was not a disaster. I’d played to Christian crowds before, back when I was in that short-lived experimental jam band with a lady who played the coathangers, and from what I remember they were a broad-minded sort of audience, open to almost anything. If I could get some chai tea circulating and source about a dozen or so coathangers, I could give these people what they wanted.
A man greeted me at the door and briefly explained how the night would work. ‘So what’s going to happen is this. The vicar will go on and talk about Jesus and then he’ll introduce a boy who goes to the church to play “Blackbird” on the acoustic guitar while all the parents wipe away tears because they all know how far the boy has come over the years, not just as a musician but as a child of God, and then the vicar will return to the stage without a microphone and will mumble your introduction so people won’t really know you’re a comedian and you’ll walk on to confused applause and then you will die on your arse for forty-five minutes and you’ll come off and your friend George will look at you and tell you that the experience of watching you tank in front of these people was nothing less than brutal and then a Christian rock band will go on and everyone will get up and dance.’
James Acaster’s Classic Scrapes Page 20
